Native & Indigenous Film Series | October 4-7 & 9. 2013

As part of the "Hemispheric Indigeneity in the Global Age" project, the series explores in comparative/contextual fashion Native and Indigenous worldviews, in particular the ones related to self-representation and governability, health and environment, and the ontology of being Native/Indigenous in today’s global age. The series intends to bring together cultural producers, shoolars, Native and Indigenous filmmakers, artists, and general public to explore, share, and act upon some of the most pressing issues first nations and pueblos originarios faced today.

Friday. October 4 | Richard White Auditorium. Duke

4.00 pm

Reel Injun. Neil Diamond (Canada-USA. 2010)

A feature-documentary takes an entertaining and insightful look at the Hollywood Indian, exploring the portrayal of North American Natives through the history of cinema.With candid interviews from directors, writers, actors and activists, including Clint Eastwood, Jim Jarmusch, Robbie Robertson, Sacheen Littlefeather, John Trudell and Russell Means, clips from hundreds of classic and recent films, Reel Injun traces the evolution of cinema’s depiction of Native people from the silent film era to today. 74 min.

Friday. October 4 | Richard White Auditorium. Duke

The film tells the stories of three communities and places they care for: the Lakota at Devils Tower in Wyoming, the Hopi in the Four Corners area of the Southwest, and the Wintu at Mt. Shasta in California. The film documents obstacles to religious freedom for land-based practitioners, and impacts on sacred sites that range from mining and ski resorts to New Age practices and rock-climbing. All places of extraordinary beauty — and impassioned controversy — as Indians and non-Indians struggle to co-exist with very different ideas about how the land should be used. For Native Americans, the land is sacred and akin to the world's greatest cathedrals. For others, the land should be used for industry and recreation. Narrated by Peter Coyote and Tantoo Cardinal (Metis), In the Light of Reverence is a beautifully rendered account of the struggles of the Lakota in the Black Hills, the Hopi in Arizona and the Wintu in California to protect their sacred sites. 52 min.

Saturday. October 5 |Nelson Mandela Auditorium. GEC, UNC-CH

10.00 am. Tecumseh’s Vision. Ric Burns & Chris Eyre (USA. 2009)

In the course of his brief and meteoric career, Tecumseh would become one of the greatest Native American leaders of all time, orchestrating the most ambitious pan-Indian resistance movement ever mounted on the North American continent. 54 min.

Recalling the steps of the ancient pilgrims, travellers of consciousness, we walk through an ancient legend told step by step in the Wirikuta desert, in Mexico. A journey is made to the mystery of the heart following the deer´s footprints and sheltered by the spirit of the fire.

Cerro Rico, Tierra Rica is a detailed observational mosaic about two distinct mining communities in southwestern Bolivia – an elegy to the landscape of the altiplano (the high plateaus of the Andes mountains) and a valuable ethnographic record of manual labor in the region. Cerro Rico, Tierra Ricafollows the aesthetic quests of early observational documentaries, producing a unique and carefully constructed visual portrait of Andean culture. Accuracy and honesty in the depiction of the miners' lives were main goals during the making of the project, but digital technologies were also used, on occasion, to lyrically expand the realm of the Bolivian landscape. As a whole, the project offers a strong denunciation of the hardships of the working class, and of the alienation inherent in industrial work inside the mines. But it is also an act of nostalgia for the loss of traditions and cultural legacies – the miners' ways of life, unique customs, colorful garments and use of language – Quechua, in this particular instance. The indigenous culture of Bolivia has survived and maintained, if sometimes humbly, its sense of power, pride and self-knowledge, even after the ravages of colonialism and exploitation. Miners dig the tunnels of the Cerro, or extract the ever-abundant salt in the plains of theSalar de Uyuni, and their work, and these two stunning landscapes, represent both the past and the future of a mining nation. 90 min. TRAILER

A group of Indigenous students from some of the 102 Indigenous nations in Colombia embarked on a journey of self-discovery. By sharing and writing their travels they find what is common to their past, present, and future. 24 min

Introduced by Miguel Rocha-Vivas, Romance Languages. UNC-CH

4.30 pm. Trail of Tears. Chris Eyre (USA. 2009)

The Cherokee would call it Nu-No-Du-Na Tlo-Hi-Lu, "The Trail Where They Cried." On May 26, 1838, federal troops forced thousands of Cherokee from their homes in the Southeastern United States, driving them toward Indian Territory in Eastern Oklahoma. More than 4,000 died of disease and starvation along the way. For years the Cherokee had resisted removal from their land in every way they knew. Convinced that white America rejected Native Americans because they were "savages," Cherokee leaders established a republic with a European-style legislature and legal system. Many Cherokee became Christian and adopted westernized education for their children. Their visionary principal chief, John Ross, would even take the Cherokee case to the Supreme Court, where he won a crucial recognition of tribal sovereignty that still resonates. The Supreme Court ruling proved no deterrent to President Andrew Jackson's demands that the Cherokee leave their ancestral lands. A complex debate divided the Cherokee Nation, with Chief Ross urging the Cherokee to stay, and Major Ridge, a respected tribal leader, urging the tribe to move West and rebuild, going so far as to sign a removal treaty himself without the authority to do so. Though in the end the Cherokee embrace of "civilization" and their landmark legal victory proved no match for white land hunger and military power, the Cherokee people were able, with characteristic ingenuity, to build a new life in Oklahoma, far from the land that had sustained them for generations. 54 min.

6.00 pm. Seed Spirits. Altha Cravey & Elva Bishop (USA-MX. 2012)

Thousands of of Otomí (Hnahnu, Indigenous peoples of Mexico) now live in Durham, NC. This film portrays their lives in San Pablito, Mexico and in Durham, NC. The Otomí are the 5th largest Indigenous population in Mexico, and like most other indigenous peoples, live in poverty and marginalization. Is common to find mostly women and children in their traditional lands (central altiplano of Mexico), while men had migrated to cities and the US. Durham has seen an increase of this community in the past 10 years. With them their language, traditions (fabric and paper making), and now families are coming with them. 30 min. TRAILER

7.00 pm. Mesnak. Ives Sioui Durand. (Canada. 2012)

Dave, an urban aboriginal in his early twenties, is a Montreal actor. His adoption at the age of 3 has erased all memory of his Native culture. When he experiences his first-ever contact with his biological mother through a photo in the mail, Dave leaves for Kinogamish, the reserve where he was born and where his biological mother, Gertrude, lives. The reunion does not unfold as expected and Dave becomes disoriented, confronted with a world that seems hostile and foreign. Although alienated from his Native culture, can Dave find a home there? Like Hamlet, the Shakespearian hero who he is working on in theatre class, Dave starts to experience an identity crisis. His unplanned return to this desolate community causes upheavals and chain reactions, while dredging up a painful past scarred by secrets and lies. 90 min.

Sunday. October 6 | Nelson Mandela Auditorium. GEC, UNC-CH

10 am. Geronimo. Dustin Craig (USA. 2009)

Craig’s first feature-length documentary, Geronimo, a production of WGBH’s 2009 American Experience series, We Shall Remain, provides a skillful reconsideration of historical interpretation. To film the dramatic reenactments of 19th-century events, he developed a unit of community-based actors.

Filmed in the states of Quintana Roo and Yucatán in Mexico and Made in Maya, the documentary is a journey into the Mayan culture allowing communities to present their ancestral knowledge in relationship to current thinking. As an insider’s work, the film offers an opportunity to know about customs, traditional medicine, cultural identity and the description of Maya ancestral knowledge, actual and alive.

2.00 pm. Paraiso for Sale. Anayansi Pardo (Panama. 2011)

The pristine archipelago of Bocas del Toro, Panama attracts retirees and developers from the U.S. with its crystal-clear waters and its island culture. In the film, Prado returns to her homeland to document the effects the fast-growing migration is having on the local native (settlers) and Indigenous community. This engaging and revealing documentary tells the personal stories of the people who call this area home and would like to keep it that way. From an American couple who’ve invested not just in their home but in their Panamanian community to a local businessman turned political hopeful and an indigenous leader fighting for his land, the characters and stories in Paraiso for Sale speak to the larger global issue of communities, new and old, under siege from faceless corporations. PARAISO FOR SALE explores issues of modern day colonialism, residential tourism, global gentrification and reverse migration, by revealing that immigration between Latin America and the US is not just a one-way street. TRAILER

3.30 pm. Wounded Knee. Stanley Nelson (USA. 2009)

One of the most infamous events in the battle for Native American right began on February 27, 1973, when over 200 armed activists from the Oglala Lakota tribe (many affiliated with the Native rights organization American Indian Movement, or AIM) took control of Wounded Knee, South Dakota, the town that was home to the Pine Ridge Reservation and the site of an infamous Indian massacre in 1890. The Oglala Lakota seized the town's official buildings, blocked off roads leading in and out of the city, and prepared for a standoff against federal authorities. The Oglala Lakota and the AIM held control of Wounded Knee for seventy-one days as they demanded reparation for broken treaties, changes in discriminatory policies and the removal of corrupt tribal officials. Filmmaker Stanley Nelson combines newsreel footage of the 1973 siege and new interviews with many of the key participants in his documentary Wounded Knee, which tells the story of the rise of the AIM in the late 1960's and early 1970's as well as the real-life drama of their most famous action.

We Women Warriors follows three native women caught in the crossfire of Colombia's warfare who use nonviolent resistance to defend their peoples' survival. Colombia has 102 aboriginal groups, one-third of which face extinction because of the conflict. Despite being trapped in a protracted predicament financed by the drug trade, indigenous women are resourcefully leading and creating transformation imbued with hope. We Women Warriors bears witness to neglected human rights catastrophes and interweaves character-driven stories about female empowerment, unshakable courage, and faith in the endurance of indigenous culture. TRAILER

Tava, A Stone House deals with the mythic interpretation of religious Mbya-Guarani on the seventeenth-century Jesuit missions in Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina.

Introduced by the Filmmakers, Q&A to follow

Monday. October 7 | Richard White Auditorium Duke University

7.00 pm. Introduced by the Filmmarkers, follow by Q&A

The Master and Divino. Tiago Campos Torres, with cinematography by Ernesto de Carvalho. (Brazil. 2013)

Two filmmakers portray life in the village and in the mission of Sangradouro, Mato Grosso: Adalbert Heide, an eccentric German missionary, that soon after the contact with the Indians, in 1957, starts to film with his Super-8 camera; and Divino Tserewahú, a young Xavante filmmaker, that produces films for television and cinema festivals since the 90s. Shifting between complicity, competition, irony and affect, they give life to their historical records, revealing peculiar back stages of indigenous catechization in Brazil.

Wednesday. October 9 | Griffith Film Theatre. Duke University

7.00 pm.

Granito: how to nail a dictator. Pamela Yates (Guatemala. 2011)

In 2009, Yates became part of a team of expert witnesses brought together to provide collaborative evidence of the Mayan genocide for a Spanish court hearing. In lieu of the Guatemalan local courts’ reluctance to open up the case locally Yates’ previos film When the Mountains Tremble became part of the evidence and an internationally appointed judge reviewed in the process deciding whether top military leaders were responsible for committing these crimes against humanity would be extradited and tried in Spain. As Yates’ voiceover narration asserts, each participant became responsible for contributing their own granito de arena (grain of sand) to putting away those responsible for the murders of more than 200,000 Mayan people and desaparecidos (the disappeared) during this 36 year war (1960-1996). 91 min.

Introduced by Emilio del Valle Escalante, Romance Languages. UNC-CH

Sponsored by: Hemispheric Indigeneity in the Global Age, Mellon Foundation -Partnership in a Global Age grant; American Indian Center, UNC-CH; Native and Indigenous Studies, UNC-CH, Duke Center for Canadian Studies.

Thanks to Native Networks, American Experience, Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies at NYU

Friday, October 4. | American Indian Center. UNC-CH

10.00 am. Indian Circle: Filmmakers in attendance will join the American Indian Circle.

Noon. Working lunch: Meeting with Faculty and Graduate Students working on Native and Indigenous issues. (by invitation)

PARKING INFORMATION (free parking at all sites):

FRIDAY: Duke East Campus (via Trinity or Campus Drive)

SATURDAY: FedEx Global Education Center parking Deck. 301 Pittboro Street. Overflow parking lot: Nash Parking lot. From Durham, Hwy 54, forward onto Raleigh Road, right onto Raleigh Road at the top of the hill, left on Cameron Avenue, left onto Wilson Street, left into Nash lot. The lot is behind the Newman Center and across the street from the Carolina Inn.